With Drew having left for the airport to see his Vikings play the Packers (and then subsequently realizing that his flight was booked EIGHT DAYS LATER), the weekly ritual of mocking the NFL’s noted sports and travel writer falls on someone else’s shoulders this week. Hopefully you’ll still enjoy the same dick joke taste. And personally, I don’t know what the dealio is with SI.com, but now it seems that I can’t copy excerpts from that site from Google Chrome into our WordPress editor. BRING BACK MY COPY AND PASTE SO I CAN RIDICULE YOU IN A LESS TIME-CONSUMING MANNER, KING! HOLD STILL WHILE I BEAT YOU DOWN, YOU FAT BEANTOWN BITCH!

1. The Giants might or might not be the best team in football, but I can tell you this:

TELL ME, GODDAMMIT! I’M ON VERITABLE PINS AND NEEDLES HERE!

They’re the deepest.

Oh.

“Jerry Reese is a psychic, I think,” Justin Tuck said from Kansas City, where the Giants had ho-hummed a 27-16 win over the Chiefs. It’s the second straight week New York toyed with a bad team, and the Giants have won their four games by an average of 11 points.

THEY’RE A GREAT TEAM BECAUSE THEY’VE BEATEN TEAMS THAT EVERYONE KNOWS ARE TERRIBLE! WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY GODDAMN CAPS LOCK?!

We’ll start to find out how good the Giants are Oct. 18, when they visit the Saints, with New Orleans coming off its bye.

NEW ORLEANS HAS BEEN BEATING SHITTY TEAMS JUST AS WELL as you. Oh, there we go.

2. The Saints look like the best team in football.

But are they the deepest? STOP HOLDING OUT ON ME, YOU CHINO-CLAD FUCK!

The Giants, Colts and Vikings might be too, and Denver and Baltimore and New England … well, proclaiming a best team is a foolish pursuit on Oct. 5.

So is taking a shit in coach class, but foolish pursuits are the spice of this man’s life.

But if the Saints are the best, I credit a decision Sean Payton made back on Jan. 13, sitting by the firepit in his backyard in Louisiana with a cold beer in his hand.

Was it behind the wheel of a Bentley in Miami? Because I think I’ve heard this story before…

At the time, he really wanted to hire Gregg Williams as his defensive coordinator; Williams had a history of making chicken salad out of chicken feathers, and Payton knew his talent on defense was decent but limited, particularly in pressure packages.

HIS DEFENSE WAS MAKE OF CHICKEN FEATHERS! CHICKEN FEATHERS RIPE FOR CHICKEN SALAD PREPERATION!

“So I had a couple of beers in me,” Payton told me over the weekend, “and I start thinking, ‘I make enough money. We really need this guy. I’m going to offer some of my own money to try to make this happen.’

His own money! Sean Payton makes a SICK AMOUNT OF MONEY! How sick? ‘Swine flu’ sick?

So the next day, I walk into [general manager] Mickey Loomis’ office and say,

“Marry me!”

‘Mickey, take $250,000 of my salary, add it onto our offer for Gregg and let’s get this thing done right now.’ Mickey called [owner] Tom Benson, they discussed it, and they agreed. So we upped the offer.”

IT WAS NOT THE BEST OFFER, BUT IT WAS THE DEEPEST!

One other thing: Payton knew it was important to Williams that he work with his son, Blake, an aspiring football coach who prepped at Princeton, and so the Saints brought him in as an offensive assistant working with the line.

He “prepped” at Princeton, and they know a thing or two about chicken salad! All they do there is eat!

Williams saw the welcome mat. He took the three-year coaching offer, and the match has been perfect.

Great story. I might even FUCKING SAY IT WAS A GODDAMN LOFTY STORY! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY CAPS LOCK, SI.COM?!

3. Feel-good story of the year? Denver.

Feeling up story of the year? Shawne Merriman.

[T]here’s one thing you have to love about the Broncos: They’ve got a Patriot way (what a coincidence!) of tuning out the outside crappola and focusing on the only thing that matters — the next play.

THIS IS A CRAPPOLA-FREE WORKPLACE, YOU FAGGOTS! TAKE YOUR CRAPPOLA TO THE LOADING DOCK! THAT GOES FOR YOU TOO, HETEROS!

How can you not love this game tonight?

It’s like two evenly-matched bowls of chicken salad! Chicken salad for everyone!

One of the keys to Minnesota-Green Bay, obviously, is the Vikings sticking to the type of football they’ve played in their 3-0 start.

IF YOU DO WHAT YOU DID WHEN YOU WON THOSE OTHER GAMES, YOU MIGHT WIN THIS GAME! THAT’S VERY HELPFUL TO YOUR CAUSE!

Minnesota’s on a 54-46 run-pass ratio, and why not?

Seriously, why the fuck don’t teams just throw the ball 80 percent of the time? GET TO WHERE THE FUCK YOU’RE GOING. Do I drive 46 percent of the way to work and then park and WALK THE REST OF THE GODDAMN WAY?! I SHOULD THINK NOT, CAMEL COCK! Or…maybe this is why not.

You can’t take away the Favre drama tonight in Minneapolis, but the football’s going to be really exciting.

Better than Chiefs-Rams? You promise?

Quote of the Week I

“What’s it gonna be next week? Two-hand touch?”

WHY CAN’T I DIVE TOWARD TOM BRADY’S KNEE WITH IMPUNITY?

– Baltimore pass rusher Terrell Suggs after getting a questionable roughing-the-passer call by referee Ron Winter for brushing against Tom Brady’s knee while Suggs was on the ground at New England Sunday.

He dove at Brady’s knee and made contact. If that didn’t warrant a flag, there wouldn’t be any quarterbacks left in this league.

Forty percent of the Green Bay active roster has never met Brett Favre. Of the 53 players eligible to dress for the Packers in the Metrodome tonight, 21 joined the team after Favre’s departure in March 2008.

Why, it’s almost as if they MOVED ON AS A TEAM WITHOUT HIM! I’M STUNNED THAT THE CITY OF GREEN BAY DIDN’T SIMPLY SHUT DOWN THE FRANCHISE WHEN HE LEFT! Seriously, how the fuck is this STILL an angle?!

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

Let’s go with “Aggravating”…I’m sorry? Oh, I thought you were polling me.

For 24 years, I lived in New Jersey, until moving to Boston last winter.

FACKING FAGGITT or something. Blah blah blah, that thing that Drew does.

I’ve found myself getting melancholy for the Garden State. Friday and Saturday illustrate why.

Do tell!

Spent Friday at Jets camp, 30 minutes west of the Meadowlands in Florham Park, with lunch in tony Madison with Darrelle Revis and Jerricho Cotchery.

NO, GODDAMMIT! THAT WAS SARCASM!

Had pizza and Peronis with lots of old friends in Cedar Grove at Lombardi’s, which has the most underrated thin-crust pizza in Essex County.

Thinner crust means you can fit more in your pockets!

Drove into the city Friday night around 10, passed Giants Stadium and realized how old I am; what was I doing driving past a Springsteen show at the Meadowlands and not stopping for the final hour?

Probably because he sucks. Seriously, if Springsteen would have been from Albuquerque, nobody would have given a shit. But you Jersey fucks have built a reputation propping him up as the messiah, even now. THE GUY HASN’T RELEASED JACK SHIT FOR 15 YEARS! But hey, that Super Bowl halftime was something. Good show. BUT IT WAS NOT LOFTY! Not lofty…

a. Why, FOX, why? Why show the top 10 plays of Brett Favre’s career? How many celebrations of his career have you done, and how many more will you do?

Pot, you remember Kettle, don’t you? From the stove?

h. Wow. Did you see that handshake between John Harbaugh and Bill Belichick? Harbaugh belichicked Belichick! Gave him the dead-fish handshake that Belichick has given Eric Mangini and Rex Ryan.

First time I’ve ever heard “dead fish” used to describe a handshake. But with Belichick, the term describes him almost universally.

i. I really like Steelers returner Stefan Logan, who’s 60 percent the player Darren Sproles is … at about 10 percent of the cost.

The guy that was robbed by a white man last night and almost single-handedly let the Chargers back into the game last night? Yeah, he’s great.

b. Indigent Retired Players Day. Leroy Kelly, a Hall of Famer, has a pension of $176 a month. Scores of players, well into the hundreds, don’t have the medical care they need. The league and its players are making headway toward ameliorating the crisis, but not soon enough.

Smarter minds than mine can figure out how to draw attention to these issues, but I do know this: A much-needed bridge between players and owners would be built if the owners spent the kind of lockstep verve on these issues some weekend as the league, the players and its network partners did in unison on breast cancer awareness Sunday.

Seriously, NFL. Fuck your pink shoes and fuck you.